Common Sense is Subjective
After watching the Elizabeth Holmes documentary, this week’s readings which I originally found boring, suddenly gained my interest. I believe the video did a great job in tying in the readings on the subject of ethical issues within tech companies with a modern example.
One of the things I found interesting was the idea that when an ideology becomes well known to the point that it becomes common sense, is when it becomes powerful. This can be seen with Wendy Liu’s adventure so far, as there are many ideologies that she experiences. The main ideology which I believe relates to all of this, is her belief of meritocracy. It seemed to be common sense to her that she deserved to earn the money that she did when she interned at Google, even though she felt unfulfilled in some way. She based this belief off of the high value of her work, as well as the effort she put into enhancing her coding skills. In the Elizabeth Holmes video, we can also see an example of ideology becoming common sense. Her ideological mission for affordable, fast blood work as a human right became widely accepted to the point that people overlooked all the flaws of her business.
Question: Have you noticed any new ideologies that have become common sense within this past decade?
Almost every aspect of our world today has been carefully crafted and manipulated by the state to appear as naturally occurring and common sense. One of the most prominent examples of this is the idea/understanding that 'tools of convenience' are a necessity to life.
ReplyDeleteTools of convenience refers to things that help assist us in our everyday activities, such as planes, microwaves, dishwashers, phones, laundry machines. When you think about it literally, none of these tools are absolutely necessary to life and it is very possible for humans to function without them, however, as the world has progressed into the technological/digital age of today these tools have been marketed to appear as absolutely essential to life.
I think that today in society there has become so many inventions and applications that allow for us to carry out everyday tasks through apps on our phones or even websites. In regard to Roslyn's post above, these tools of convenience have become even more convenient and accessible with the creation of new technologies and softwares. With this, this ideologie of these tools have become common sense as you said, because they have become second nature to us. Although these tools are not crucial to live, they have become so addictive and easy for us to use that we have allowed these tools to take over for us in certain situations, for example new security apps allow users to lock and unlock their doors, windows from almost anywhere remotely- these inventions have taken away our sense of individuality in a sense, as we rely on these devices instead of doing things for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteHi Tony,
ReplyDeleteConcerning your question, I remember in CS310 discussing Christian Fuch's critical theory. Mores specifically, this radical approach or theory of change where we as a society demand more of a shift in learning, thinking, practice and development. Again, concerning critical theory, Silicon Valley long argued (in agreement with Fuch's) that society had a domination problem. How the politics of communication often found ways to redistribute power and not get rid of domination at all. In relation to the course, we as a society have accepted the norm of technology as progress or innovation. Silicon Valley now is that problem regarding a domination free society as Silicon Valley and its companies control much of the ideologies we adopt today and consider normal. So I would argue that while we think we have changed and critiqued old ways of power redistribution and solved issues like womens equal rights, free speech platforms and other disruptive ideas for that radical shift in society, we have done the opposite and not really made much progress away from a domination free democratic society. Silicon Valley has too much economic and political power that anything they invent or say we believe is the best interest for our species and world as a whole.